"I Used To Carry A Wallet, Now I Just Need To Carry My Phone": Understanding Current Banking Practices and Challenges Among Older Adults in China

TL;DR

This study explores how older adults in China adopt digital banking, highlighting their motivations, challenges, and coping strategies to inform better design of financial services for aging populations.

Contribution

It provides qualitative insights into older adults' digital banking experiences in China, emphasizing their ecosystem use and specific usability challenges.

Findings

Older adults use both physical and digital banking as an ecosystem.

Perceived usefulness and social influence motivate digital banking adoption.

Challenges include trust, security concerns, and low self-efficacy.

Abstract

Managing finances is crucial for older adults who are retired and may rely on savings to ensure their life quality. As digital banking platforms (e.g., mobile apps, electronic payment) gradually replace physical ones, it is critical to understand how they adapt to digital banking and the potential frictions they experience. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 older adults in China, where the aging population is the largest and digital banking grows fast. We also interviewed bank employees to gain complementary perspectives of these help givers. Our findings show that older adults used both physical and digital platforms as an ecosystem based on perceived pros and cons. Perceived usefulness, self-confidence, and social influence were key motivators for learning digital banking. They experienced app-related (e.g., insufficient error-recovery support) and user-related challenges (e.g., trust, security and privacy concerns, low perceived self-efficacy) and developed coping strategies. We discuss design considerations to improve their banking experiences.